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Wednesday, October 17, 2012

These beautiful quilts were created by two very talented
quilters, Margaret and Lisa, both are members of the Tuesday Pelican Patchwork
and Quilting group.... Thanks, Margaret and Lisa for giving me permission to
post these photos of your quilts in blogland for others to enjoy your lovely
work.

Lisa also made the below "Dancing Batiks" quilt with – paper foundation templates, and pieces of Batik fabrics. Bradley and Jody Niemeyer designed the layout and foundation pieces for "Dancing Batiks", Lisa has done a terrific job of colour placement. Foundation paper piecing is used when sewing the pieces of Batik fabric onto the foundation units. Paper piecing, curved piecing and traditional piecing skills are required to join each unit after the foundation piecing are completed.

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Margaret chose to use the paper-piecing method to
construct the Star quilt, she used pretty floral scraps of fabric from her
scrap collection, (her grandson did the layout design), and paper-piecing
ensured the stars had straight edges and accurate joins, especially at the
centre of the stars. This was an awesome job of hand-piecing and hand-quilting.

Margaret also made the very pretty Sunbonnet Sue
quilt below. Every little girl would love to own and cuddle into one of these cute adorable
quilts.

When I first saw these quilt, I thought how awesome they all look! I hope
you enjoy them as much as we did at the quilters group. Aren't they beautiful?

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Today I wanted to share with you my Crayon Fabric Art quilting, I found this process really easy. I used regular wax crayons (Faber-Castell, Crayola, etc.) the
kind you buy at the local shops instead of special fabric crayons.

The fabric I chose to use for this small whole cloth project was a white
30/70% poly-cotton blend, I could have used off-white, or pastels but I wanted the lightest colour so I picked white, as I thought a darker colour would
have been hard to colour and shade for my first attempt at this process. Before I started it was important too remove
all the manufacturing chemical treatment from the fabric, (sizing) by washing
the fabric, without adding fabric softener, I did this because if the chemical
is not washed out of the fabric, the sizing will act as a barrier and repel the
crayons pigments once the wax has evaporated by pressing with a hot dry iron, so I
pre-washed and dried the white poly-cotton blend and ironed the fabric to remove
all the wrinkles.

Here is the rest of the process

Cut freezer paper to the exact same size as the whole cloth and ironed it
to the back side of the background fabric, this stabilized the fabric and made
it easy to traces my design using a HB pencil onto the whole cloth.

Now came the fun part colouring the designs with crayons outlining the edges
with darker shades of colour to make them stand out. I found the harder you
pressed the crayons the darker the colours would be. I applied my crayon
colours in one, then two, then three layers. When the coloured area had too
much crayon wax I would press the area with a hot dry iron making sure I had
paper towel between the top and bottom of the whole cloth and I also covered
the top with the Teflon pressing sheet. The hot iron would melt the wax and set
the colour pigment into the warm fabric, once the colour pigment was set I
could colour the area again, and again adding lots of layers of colour giving
me a deeper depth of shades of colour.

When I was happy with my crayon colouring, I peeled off the freezer paper from
the back of my fabric and again pressed the whole cloth fabric between two
pieces of paper towel, putting one behind and one on top with the Teflon
pressing sheet to cover the area to be pressed. This is the secret to soaking up
all the melted wax and also keeps the wax from getting on my ironing board and
iron.
Using the cotton setting on my iron lift and press for 10 seconds in
each area and then move to the next area taking extreme care not to glide my
iron over the Teflon Pressing sheet or scorch my fabric....the last step was to
repress using paper towels only on the top and bottom this was to removes any
oils, which may have been left in the fabric. I then wiped off my iron and
Teflon Pressing sheet to remove colour residue which may have been left. I
used Rayon embroider threads and matched the colours of the background colours
which gave a soft sheen and variegated threads to add interest.

This Clear View Foot includes inner 1/4" and outer 3/8" marks for even spacing when echo quilting eliminating the need to mark out the fabric beforehand. It also has a convenient slot opening for quilting and zig zag stitching for free motion applique.

I think I will use the gum blossom and bamboo stitches from this practice block and free moton quilt the area. Not sure yet.

About Me

Hi, I live in Western Australia I am married with two grown sons and six grandchildren and my two daughter-in-laws are wonderful. I love all forms of patchwork and quilting from scrap quilts, hand and machine-piecing, to foundation-piecing and fusible applique.
Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. If you have a question regarding my post, I will try to respond to it in the comments section of that post or via email.